The first challenge for Writer/Director Richard Linklater in beginning WAKING LIFE was to address the issue: "How do you make a film about something that most likely happens entirely in the mind?" The first script was more like "an idea, pages and pages of notes and a working method," Linklater says.
The actual shooting of the live action began in the summer of 1999 and took about 25 days. The crew was similar in size to a documentary crew - Linklater and Producer Tommy Pallotta, using consumer-level cameras (Sony TRV900s and one PCi), and one sound person who was also responsible for mixing.
Linklater and Pallotta agree that there was tremendous freedom and mobility in working with such a small crew. "Whenever you have a big crew, the director spends so much time telling so many different people what exactly he wants, but in this case, it was easy for Rick (Linklater) to pick up a camera and get what he wanted," Pallotta said. "It was the dream way to shoot a movie." Linklater added, "I was back to locations that I'd been at with 100- person crews, and this time there were just four of us." The difference was never more apparent than when Linklater and the crew went to shoot the jail scene at a location in Lockhart, TX that he had previously used for THE NEWTON BOYS. "The time we were there before, there were a lot of trucks, generators, a huge production. This time, we just zipped up in a car, filmed the whole scene in an hour and a half and left."
The filmmakers still marvel at one extraordinary feat they achieved while shooting - in one day a total of 22 pages were shot. Typically a production will shoot about two or three pages a day. "It was an intense dialogue day," Linklater remembers, "that included the 'dream room' and two other lengthy sections. They were all well rehearsed. We gave everybody an hour and a half to shoot his or her scene over and over and we just worked through it. We had two cameras, lots of footage, nothing rushed, and pretty soon it's 5 o'clock, we're through and we've shot 22 pages of dialogue. I don't think there are too many films that can do that. It was wild."
The shooting, was limited to three cities - Austin and the surrounding areas, New York and San Antonio. But in keeping with the surreal feel of the film, there are no geographical references. In some instances, there is a bridge that resembles the Brooklyn Bridge, a subway that resembles a New York subway, or a skyline that has the feel of Austin, but there is never a positive indicator of those locations.
Several of the locations that were used had personal links to the filmmakers. To begin with, lead actor Wiley Wiggins' bedroom, to which we return several times, was Art Director Bob Sabiston's bedroom in the house he and Pallotta shared. The always-wavering digital clock that continued to remind Wiley of his dream state was Sabiston's clock. Similarly, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy's scene was shot at Linklater's apartment in Austin. But, in typical independent film fashion, there were also the less orthodox locales like the one used for the train boxcar scene. For that particular day, the filmmakers actually crawled under a chain link fence to get their shot. "We were so down and dirty," Linklater muses. "It felt like renegade, low-budget film where you could just take locations and steal stuff."
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